Recently, there has been widespread the system in which a television signal is transmitted through a satellite such as a broadcasting satellite or communication satellite and received at homes. This system is able to maintain nearly 150 channels and to broadcast very many programs.
In the above-mentioned system, it is proposed that EPG (electronic program guide) is transmitted, received and displayed at a reception side and a user selects a desired program from this electronic program guide.
The manner in which EPG is displayed will be described with reference to FIGS. 1A and 1B. FIG. 1A shows a genre selection picture on which a plurality of genres such as "ALL" (all genres), "NEWS" (news), "MOVIE" (movie) or "SPORT" (sport) are displayed. A user can move a cursor (not shown in FIG. 1A) on the display screen by operating an operation device such as a remote commander to select a desired genre from these genres.
When the user selects a desired genre on the genre selection picture shown in FIG. 1A, the genre selection picture is switched to a program list picture shown in FIG. 1B in response to the selected genre.
In the program list picture shown in FIG. 1B, broadcasting station names (channels) are displayed on the vertical axis and time is displayed on the horizontal axis. A title of program which is to be broadcast on that time is displayed at the position determined by the two axes.
When "ALL" is selected in the genre selection picture shown in FIG. 1A, for example, a picture of a monitor (television receiver) is switched from the genre selection picture to the program list picture shown in FIG. 1B. Programs of all genres for every channels are displayed on the switched program list picture.
Only a part of actual program list is displayed on the program list picture shown in FIG. 1B. When the user wants to see positions other than the area which is now displayed, the user can move a display area of one picture shown in FIG. 2 upper, lower, right and left by using the operation device such as the remote commander.
The user can watch the desired program (or information concerning the desired program) by placing the cursor to the display position of a desired program from a group of programs displayed on the program list picture.
However, the EPG encounters with the following problems.
Specifically, since the program list picture shown in FIG. 1B has a large number of channels and times on the upper, lower, right and left directions as shown in FIG. 2, the user has to scroll the display area of one picture shown in FIG. 2 in two directions of the upper and lower direction and the right and left direction, and hence this is very cumbersome for the user.
Further, in the EPG, as described above, the genre selection picture shown in FIG. 1A and the program list picture shown in FIG. 1B are formed of independent pictures (i.e., the genre selection picture and the program list picture are displayed hierarchically). Accordingly, when the user watches any one of picture (e.g., program list picture), the user cannot watch the other picture (e.g., genre selection picture). Thus, when the user wants to watch a different picture, the user has to change the hierarchy of the displayed pictures, which also is cumbersome for the user.